Edited 9 May
Billion here = 1000 million.
Many of the European Union’s (EU) member governments are plunging deeper into debt to bail out the Greek government’s far larger one incurred by the incompetence and corrupt practices of its leaders. A group of lawyers in Germany is filing a suit against its state because these actions it says are illegal according to the EU’s constitution. I quote from an article, one of many on the subject:
“The complaint will argue that the rescue contains an illegal rate subsidy, threatens monetary stability as encoded in the Maastricht Treaty, and breaches the ‘no bail-out’ clause. Greece is clearly responsible for its own mess.”
Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland are all teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and may soon also be standing in line for a handout if nothing changes.
Consider the Netherlands which has the smallest financial receive/give ratio of the EU and where politicians are threatening the people with further cuts in social services and higher taxation to pay off a national debt of more than 30 billion euro. This while billions of devaluing euros are still being plucked out of thin air to bail out banks and fund pointless and devastating phony wars abroad as well as filling the pockets of corrupt politicians in developing countries. Now an extra five billion euros are heading for Greece with little probability of a return on the investment.
That the IMF is also pouring money into Greece is no consolation when one realises that this institution is also financed by the taxpayer.
The obvious losers in all this are the (extra)ordinary hard-working people, the ones who with their offspring must finance all the above, now and into the future, while continuing to be treated unfairly by elected representatives kowtowing to the lobbyists of the military-industrial complex.
Of course, we the people are not entirely blameless for the situation in which we now find ourselves, having contributed to the greed and self-satisfaction that has ruled the developed countries for far too long. Even so, it’s really sickening to see how a relatively few unscrupulous members of society can exert such a negative influence on the affairs of the masses and continue to get away with it.
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